Until Avs get a killer instinct again, they'll still be losers in the end

They fooled us again.

The boys in the room this morning said all the politically correct things with the worst team in hockey in their barn. They said how they don’t look at the records of their opponents, that everyone is a pro and that they get paid too and that they’ve learned from past mistakes and…blah…blah…blah, it all turned out.

The Avs proceeded to go out and disgrace their own logo and the game of hockey with a brutally bad performance in a 3-1 loss to the 8-25-5 Arizona Coyotes. This result comes a little more than three weeks after the Avs lost to the next-worst team in hockey, the Buffalo Sabres, at home.

And this, this is why these Avs are still not ready for prime time. We’ve seen so many otherwise positive things from this group this year; a still-winning record close to January, some great wins over top teams, some good new youthful additions. With Cale Makar and Conor Timmins tearing it up for Team Canada in the World Junior Tournament and a raft of coming draft picks from the Matt Duchene trade, the future still looks bright to me with this club.

But this organization will never be a champion again if it continues to show the killer instinct of puppy dogs.

This team still just does this over and over again. They get a little prosperity and they act like the rest will be easy, that they just have to throw their sticks on the ice and collect the two points. One home loss against one of the two worst teams is bad. Two, in less than a month, is inexcusable.

I asked three players in the room after the game – Alexander Kerfoot, Anton Lindholm and Mikko Rantanen – if they might have thought, even subconsciously, that this was a game they had in the bag before it even started. No, they all swore to me, looking at me right in the eye.

“We talked about how we have to come out the same way every night, that we’re only three points out of a playoff spot and need (this) game,” Kerfoot said. “To put up that kind of effort is unacceptable. We want to approach every game the same way. The really good teams in this league are always consistent. They bring it every night, no matter the opponent. That’s something we’ve got to strive for.”

Jared Bednar said it correctly that “We’re not that good” if any of his players got a big head before this, or the Buffalo game. Bednar said “We were light on the puck” and that’s correct too. The Avs were also lazy, icing the puck too many times to count, not forechecking hard and quitting on too many battles along the wall. They passed when they should have shot, shot when they should have passed and generally couldn’t connect more than two dots in a row all night long.

These four lost points are going to be the killers when this team looks back on another non-playoff season, if that’s how it ends. Somehow, some way, this group of “core” players – Gabe Landeskog, Nathan MacKinnon, Semyon Varlamov, Erik Johnson – has to get it through their skulls that you never take a night off in this league, not if you want to be known as a winner.

This team took another night off when they thought they could get away with it. They keep doing it, time and time again.

What’s that definition of insanity again?